Russell Targ did an experiment to guess the future roll of a die. Six pictures were chosen [but the perceiver was not allowed to know about them]
—each picture representing the number displayed by the die at a later time.
A picture was randomly selected and put in an envelope, and then shown to the viewer after the die was
rolled. The results were just as good as when the subject was asked to view a hidden picture in the present
[10].
…Associative Remote Viewing (ARV).
In ARV, the objective is not to “foresee” individual events directly, but rather to obtain remotely viewed
images of objects pre-associated with defined outcomes. This has the advantage of creating a “failsafe”
mechanism—if the images gathered by remote viewing did not match any of the objects pre-selected for
the target pool, the results are considered invalid.
ARV also has another distinct advantage. Swann and Targ both agree that it is exceptionally difficult to
read words (such as headlines) and numbers (such as stock prices) while remote viewing. At earlier stages
of experience, most remote viewers suffer from a form of “RV dyslexia”, in which similar geometric
elements rearrange themselves [11]. By replacing outcomes with substantially different objects, a
“workaround” to this problem is possible.
ARV is useful primarily when there is a limited number of possible future outcomes. It is exceptionally
useful when there is a “binary” outcome, such as deciding whether a certain investment will make or lose money with a set time frame.
Targ’s best-known experiment involved forecasting the price of silver over a series of one-week
periods. In this experiment, there were four potential outcomes for each week.
The outcomes were
separated in to “up a little” (less than or equal to $.25), “up a lot” (≥$.25), “down a little”
(less than or equal to$.25) or “down a lot” (≥$.25).
These four discrete conditions would be represented by such diverse objects as a light bulb, a flower, a book, or a stuffed animal.
The sponsor of the experiment (a professional investor) picked the four objects, while Targ contacted
by phone the remote viewer to get his impressions of the object “associated” with the outcome of the silver market for that week. Based on the description of the remote viewer, silver futures contracts were bought or sold, and then liquidate at the end of the week. Of the nine forecasts performed in this experiment, all nine were correct, and over $120,000 was earned. The story subsequently made the front page of the Wall Street Journal [in 1984] [12].
The experiment was repeated the following year with the intention of making more money, but
reportedly failed under a combination of [errors] and greed [13].
Targ revised the weekly experiments with a group of friends in 1995. This time, Targ refined his
protocol over his previous experiments to include error detection. If the remote viewers each identified
two different targets (one associated with the “up” state and one associated with the “down” state), they
would have the potential to cancel each other out. If one of the remote viewers failed to identify any target while the other succeeded, a “trade” was entered based on the target that was identified. In this
experiment, the remote viewers accurately predicted the outcome of the silver market eleven out of twelve times (p=0.003) [14].
[10] D. Radin, Precognition, Presentiment, and Remote Viewing (speech at the Esalen Invitational Conference “Subtle Energies
and the Uncharted Realms of the Mind”, June 6–11 1999.
[11] R. Targ, Limitless Mind, New World Library, Novato, CA, 2004, p. 53.
[12] Eric Larson, Did Psychic Powers Give Firm a Killing in the Silver Market? Wall Street J. (Oct 22 1984) 1.
[13] Targ (2004).
[14] R. Targ, J. Katra, Viewing the future: a pilot study with an error-detecting protocol, J. Sci. Explor. 9 (3) (1995) 367–380.
Adapted from Technological Forecasting & Social Change 75 (2008) 142–153
disaffected purveyor 